Volkswagen Tiguan R review

It’s a blooming quick car this, especially if you engage launch control. One day, when the car world has changed forever and electric is the default, someone will point to performance family SUVs with launch control and wonder what the heck we were thinking buying them. While VW cranks up production of the ID.3 and its myriad platform-mates, elements of this car can’t help but feel like a sidestep into a curious automotive cul-de-sac.

An impressive amount of hot hatchback DNA makes it into the Tiguan R intact, though. It drives extremely neatly however much yobbishness you deploy – its mixture of 4WD and torque vectoring shuffles the power around almost imperceptibly. You can wring out every rev of its muscular engine without throwing the chassis into disarray beneath you. There's no drift mode, mind, and it stops short of the Golf R's engagement, blunted by its extra height and weight.

There’s a price to pay its tautness, though, and that’s a residual firmness to the ride whichever of its three levels you’re in. Comfort is fairly knobbly on road, Sport just about tolerable, Race a step too far even on relatively smooth surfaces. Perhaps if it were softer we’d bemoan it didn’t feel ‘R’ enough (something the larger Touareg R can be accused of), but as it stands, it just feels too stiff to be everyday family transport. And if that’s not what you’re buying this car for, you probably ought to be sticking to the Golf. Perhaps those Frubes are in danger of making an unwelcome return after all.

Settle on an A-road or motorway and it’s better equipped for fuss-free travel. It sits at 2,000rpm (or so) at the UK speed limit and is quiet and comfy inside when the roads are nice and smooth. But then so is a regular Tiguan…